During my work on the ZeuS Tracker I often see insecure ZeuS installations that allow easy access to the ZeuS MySQL database or the ZeuS Admin Panel of a Command&Control server; In some cases the MySQL database appear for a short time on unprotected, public webservers without even a password protection, usually in order to transfer data between different criminal groups. Some time ago I had the occasion to copy such an unprotected database and mirror the ZeuS admin panel software on my own test system. This allowed me to study the Admin interface and document it in this post, so I can reveal you details about the ZeuS internals.

First of all I give you some information and statistical data about the ZeuS C&C server concerned:

Let’s say that the ZeuS C&C server is hosted on veryevilzeusdomain.tld. The botnet has a size of 3’985 infected clients (total installations). The server is currently offline and was hosted on AS9800 (UNICOM CHINA UNICOM). The C&C server was online for 25 days (2009-02-13 until 2009-03-09). During this period, the cybercriminal has captured over 3’677’358 datasets.

Below you can see some statistical data about this ZeuS Command&Control server:

Botnet size per day

Botnet geo location

Number of captured datasets

Insight ZeuS

Let’s start with the ZeuS Admin Panel. Here we go…
Normally, the ZeuS Admin Panel is located on a file called “in.php”. Example:

http://veryevilzeusdomain.tld/zs/in.php

The login page of the ZeuS Panel looks like this:

On the login page, you can choose between two different languages: Russia and English. After a successful login, you will be redirected to the statistical summary of the ZeuS installation:

On this page you are able to group the infected clients (bots) to different botnets. This can be very useful. For example: You can group infected machines which have a fast internet connection to one “botnet”. You can also see some interesting data like how many logs are in the database, the time of first install and the total bot count.

On the section botnet->Online bots you can see some information about each bot which is currently online:

The function Screenshot is quit interesting. With this function the cybercriminal is able to get a screenshot of each infected system, which is currently online. As you can see, the ZeuS trojan installs a backdoor which creates a SOCKS proxy and a Web proxy on the infected system. The cybercriminal can use these proxies to hide his identity while he access eg. the victims online banking account to steal money from them. By clicking on a proxy, the cybercriminal can get some information about the proxy (e.g. on which port the proxy is installed or whether the proxy is already used or not):

On the tab Remote commands the cybercrime can define commands for a hole botnet, bots from a specified country or just a single computer:

For example, such command can advise a infected client to download more malicious code:

Here is a list of commands, which are available in the ZeuS crimeware:

block_url

unblock_url

rexeci

lexeci

delsf

resetgrab

getmff

delmff

getcert

addsff

rexec

lexec

getfile

upcfg

kos

On the navigation tab Logs the cybercriminal is able to start a log search. There, he can set a filter and search for a specified string and/or a specified Log typ. The Logs search has also a function to search in a specified time range. For example: Let’s start a search for FTP credentials which the ZeuS crimeware has captured on the 6. march:

Here is a list of Log types which the cybercriminal can search for:

any

HTTP

HTTPs

HTTP/HTTPs

FTP

POP3

Grabbed data

Protected Storage

IE history

Other

As you can see, the cybercriminal is also able to search for captured HTTPS credentials:

On the screenshot above you can see that the crimeware has already stole credentials for online services like Windows Live and Google. But the crimeware is even worse: It is able to capture credentials for Online Banking accounts from HTTPS connections and from the protected storage (Pstore):

Last but not least on the System settings in the navigation the cybercriminal can add / edit profiles:

Conclusion

The ZeuS crimeware kit is a big security issue and is still spearing thru Drive-By infections and mass spam campaigns like the spoofed Delta Air Line spam on February 09 (Link).

If we take a look into the ZeuS Tracker, we can see over 100 ZeuS config files which are currently online. Additionally the tracker has already captured over 250 unique binaries.

I highly recommend corporate networks to use the ZeuS blocklist to block malicious traffic from and to well known ZeuS C&C servers on the corporate web gateway/ firewall.

Disclaimer

The test system I used for the screenshots below was never connected to the internet, so no outbound network accesses occured during those tests. It was not required to enter any passwords or other credentials on any servers to obtain this copy of the database or the ZeuS admin panel software I mirrored – all of that was available for short periods of time unprotected on the net. But, as stated above, many real live ZeuS systems actually are insecure and would allow third parties to break in – events, that seem to occur regularly when botnets from one group are stolen by other groups.